Your Right to Know

View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoSam Greene | DISPATCH PHOTOSLibertarian Charlie Earl addresses his state party’s convention a day after being kicked off the May 6 primary ballot as a gubernatorial candidate. He wept twice in the first five minutes of his keynote speech.

Charlie Earl was near the end of his keynote speech to about 50 people at the Libertarian Party
of Ohio’s convention yesterday when he said, “I really am the equivalent of a book in Boston.

“Yeah, I’ve been banned,” Earl said.

The Libertarians held their convention at the DoubleTree hotel on Hutchinson Avenue on the Far
North Side despite word on Friday that Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted had booted Earl off
the ballot for the 2014 governor’s race because of a technical error by the party’s paid petition
circulator.

Husted took the same action against Libertarian attorney-general candidate Steve Linnabary. The
Libertarians have filed an appeal in federal court.

As expected, there were strong words of anger and accusations from Libertarians about
Republicans, including Husted, Gov. John Kasich and state legislators, who Libertarians believe
have tried to keep them off the ballot.

But there was also a sober look inward by Earl and other party leaders, acknowledging the party’s
faults in the events that led to Earl’s dismissal from the ballot and the almost-incalculable odds
of an Election Day victory should Earl’s candidacy be restored.

Of the 50 people listening to Earl speak yesterday, one was a Green Party official and another
was tea party leader Tom Zawistowski, who ran unsuccessfully to be Ohio Republican Party chairman
last year. If everyone else in the room had collected 10 valid signatures to place Earl on the
ballot, he still wouldn’t have had the 500 signatures a minor party needed to qualify for the May 6
primary.

Signature gathering was going so poorly for Libertarians that they turned to two professional
circulators, and those two did not declare on the petitions that they were paid. Husted, in
response to a protest, disqualified the Libertarians because of that.

“Libertarians, this crap better never happen again,” said Earl, who showed yesterday that the
Ohio electorate has, at the least, potentially lost a colorful candidate. He wept twice in the
first five minutes of his speech, pausing after the second time to say, “Excuse me. When I cry, I
snot.”

Earl said his candidacy and the Libertarian movement offered a third option for people to “
express their discontent.” The other two options are to either “go quietly into the night” or “rise
up with an anger and a fury that I don’t want to see,” he said.

“We’ve got to go out and kick someone in the tush, whether we’re on the ballot or not,” Earl
said.

Libertarians have won injunctions in federal court twice in this election cycle preventing
Husted from enforcing two GOP-passed bills signed by Kasich that changed election rules in a manner
that many said would have made it difficult for Libertarians to make the ballot.

Observers say that in a close election, Earl’s presence on the November ballot could siphon
votes away from Kasich and do the incumbent’s candidacy harm.

“It’s bullsssh, yeah, that’s the word,” said Ann Leech of Cincinnati, who said she has been a
Libertarian for nearly 40 years. “They’re afraid of us.”

But a fear among Republicans, if it exists, would be based on what a Libertarian might do to
help Democrat Ed FitzGerald, not on whether Earl could win. An upset like that, party officials
said, is decades away.